Single White Women Lead In Number Of Abortions

April 27, 1985|By United Press International

NEW YORK — Most of the nearly 1.6 million abortions in the United States are performed on young, white and single women, but more non-whites seek the operations, a prominent population research organization said Friday.

In 1981, 70 percent of the 1.6 million abortions were obtained by white women, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, but the abortion rate was higher among non-whites. There were 56 abortions for every 1,000 non-white women, compared to 24 abortions for every 1,000 white women.

This higher abortion rate is the result of a higher pregnancy rate among non-whites, Stanley Henshaw and colleagues reported in the March-April issue of Family Planning Perspectives, a Guttmacher Institute publication.

Overall, the frequency of abortions in various groups of women had not changed much between 1980 and 1981 and 1981 and 1982, they reported.

''The abortion rate was down somewhat for married women, but it was unchanged for unmarried women,'' Henshaw said in a telephone interview. This decline might be partly due to increased use of surgical sterilization by married couples.

The institute said unmarried whites are more likely than unmarried blacks to have an abortion, but married black women are more likely to choose abortion than married whites.

Teen-agers obtained 28 percent of the legal abortions, a slightly lower percentage than in 1980. Thirty-five percent of the abortions were in women ages 20 to 24, according to the report.

There are about 30 abortions a year for every 1,000 women in the United States, with higher rates found in New York, California, Colorado, Nevada, Maryland, Idaho and Florida.